


Knight of the Living Dead

by a_mere_trifle



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Doomed Timelines, F/M, Muteness, POV Second Person, Quest, Royalty, knighthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 01:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_mere_trifle/pseuds/a_mere_trifle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her robes are wearing thin again, her crown is literally thorns, and she wields knitting-needles instead of a scepter.</p>
<p>She doesn't need you here. It's plain to you, they'd kill and die for her without a thought. It doesn't matter what they call you, what they think you are; the red on your armor isn't blood, not enamel, but rust.</p>
<p>She keeps you anyway. And she will not be killed while you still breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knight of the Living Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seaweedie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaweedie/gifts).



> Hope you'll like it-- was a bit of a rush, and I ship Rose/Dave most at the end of the world.
> 
> Request #2  
> Characters/Pairing: Rose hearts Dave  
> Situation: this is my favorite lady/knight ship, and all i want is fic  
> accurately reflecting that dynamic. the specifics are up to you - you  
> could go full-on literal and do a medieval/fairytale setting with Rose  
> as the vicious, morally ambiguous queen and Dave as her stalwart right  
> hand, or you could cast Rose as a sharp businesswoman with Dave as her  
> loyal VP, or you could do a Buffy crossover with Rose as a Drusilla  
> more skilled in the art of faking lucidity than the original and Dave  
> basically being the same exact person he always is, except this time  
> with Spike-y overtones. these are just a few suggestions, i honestly  
> don't care what goes down as long as a) kissing happens and b) Rose  
> runs this shit, whatever this shit happens to be.
> 
> Oh, and Rose has [Ulysses on her mind.](http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/ulysses)

\--

Her robes are wearing thin again, her crown is literally fucking thorns, and she has knitting-needles instead of a scepter.

Her subjects are crowding around her-- every day, the crowd's a little smaller-- but they're still just as adoring, pressing close against some invisible imaginary wall of collective propriety to brush their fingers against the raveling darkness of her velvet train. Today is a court-day; they hesitantly come up, in ones and twos, with their petty fucking squabbles that seem like complete fucking bullshit to you, the last of anyone's worries. She hears them out, like it's actually important. She passes judgment. Her word is law.

She doesn't need you here. It's plain to you, they'd kill and die for her without a thought. She needs no protector. She needs no lawman. She needs no Knight.

Just as well. It doesn't matter what they call you, what they think you are; the red on your armor isn't blood, not enamel, but rust.

She keeps you anyway, because you have nowhere else to go, and because you have a place to fill, however terribly you do it. She turns, and her violet eyes meet yours; and as a set-piece in the ceremony, you escort her home.

\--

There are fewer stars out than there were yesterday, but that's been going on for years now. It's been accelerating, though, the last few months, so much you can see it with the naked eye. The stars are going out, one by one, five by five. The moon's been gone for years. You were just as glad when it finally faded out of sight, dimmer than a star. Its gold gleam reminded you of everything you'd fucked up, everything you'd lost.

Not that everything else doesn't do the same; but Derse was shit to begin with, so you've heard. A few more beasts in the wilderness, a few towers broken and crumbling; they could give a rat's ass, here. They think they have it worlds better, now-- and the crazy fucking _bullshit_ is, the fuckers might be right.

She looks up at the sky, and says, "Stars don't just go out. They tend to explode."

Yeah, that's the better way to go, really. Whenever leaving's necessary, and everybody's got to sometime.

She says, "Whatever is causing it may come for us."

Possible. Or it might leave you here, abandoning you like the rest of the universe has, irrelevant, beaten, broken, thrown away. 

You wonder which would be worse. 

She sighs, and turns away from the window, back into her room. You follow, settling into your usual place (two paces behind her, one to the left), as she sits in front of her mirror, taking the black crown off her head. You don't know why she wears the thing, but it's How Things Are Supposed to Work here, and you learned a long time ago that it was way easier not to argue with the Dersites about that kind of shit.

Her eyes meet yours in the mirror; there's a drop of blood trickling past the bridge of her nose. She says, "I know I shouldn't say it, but I so terribly miss your voice."

Your eyes dart involuntarily to your own reflection, and the jagged white line that crosses your throat, dips down your chest, nearly lost in the midst of your old burns. You always see it anyway. You know where to look, and you can see nothing else.

Your eyes flicker back up to glance at their own reflection, remembering the shades you lost long ago-- and back to hers, weary and dry and cold and pained and strong. You know that you've been knocked off-course, lost to whatever destiny they say you had, but you still can't imagine that she was born for anything but this.

You hope they had something special in mind. 

She hands you the crown, and you put it away, closing it in its velvet-lined box. She threw out all the green and gold from the palace, bit by bit, though it was the work of years; black and purple are all that's left, now.

You turn back as she blots her forehead with a handkerchief, and remember-- there's also still a little red.

\--

It reminds you of Darth Vader, really, a joke that isn't very funny when you hear your labored breath rasp in your ears. Shores of a fucking sea of lava, and an Empress coming to your aid.

Of course, that's not what she was, then, and the gear you'd dragged yourself onto wasn't much less fucking hot than the lava had been. Out of the fire onto the frying pan, and Christ, had it been too much like a kitchen; you've found yourself an unwilling vegetarian ever since, not that you'd have had much choice here anyway. Not much meat to eat that wasn't nak'ing or yapping at you beforehand.

You remember her eyes, burning bright against dark skin-- and that's all you remember, the next few weeks are gone. Most of the week preceding is pretty fucking blurry too, like a broken mirror, a few fragments intact with edges so sharp they can cut you bloody before you even feel it. But the weeks after? Nothing. She says they thought you were dying, for certain. She says there were times they thought you were dead. 

You wonder, sometimes, why you aren't. If you just weren't hurt enough, or if you were just that determined, or if they took that good care of you, or if she might have made some sort of hellpact with a tentacle-happy horrorterror-- or maybe she had already; she's never said where those eyes came from, and you've never asked, because you aren't entirely sure you saw them to begin with. You've never seen them since-- and you haven't seen any hellpervs in the sky, either. Maybe it's coincidence. Or maybe it isn't.

All you know is that she was there, every night, through all the nightmares of fire and death; and she was there when the immediate danger was over, and you were left to figure out where you were, and what was left to you, and how to come to terms with it. The last living humans in your universe.

You were homeless, and there was a broken moon without a queen, and natives who were more than happy to see you as royalty-- though they never could decide whether you were a prince or a knight. Whatever; she was running the show. You couldn't have given orders even if your throat hadn't been cut; administration isn't your thing. You do one thing, and you do it yourself, and you do it well. Knight, then. Knight of Derse? Knight of Bumfuck Deadspace? 

Knight of the Queen?

Words mean nothing, anyway. You knew that even before you lost them.

\--

She has a schedule, and she adheres to it, despite there being no real reason to do so. Morning begins exactly at noon, as you rap decorously at her door (for some reason, no one gives a fuck if you're on the wrong side of it). She sits up, blinking grumpily at you, usually just on this side of being hungover (she's got it down to an art, now), and you see the chambermaid in. 

(She tried to dismiss the chambermaid-- hell, most of the Palace servants. But they were so distressed that she was forced to relent. These are people custom-built to a purpose, lost without one, and it's sad and kind of creepy but there's no reason to make them miserable trying to change it.)

She eats one egg, and drinks her tea, and then she is up, heading for her closet (she's guiltily relieved that the clothes-maids were among the lost; trying not to get dressed by one of those people would be a nightmare). She keeps the velvet for her public outings; normal days are linen and silk, all wearing thin. (Grist is running ever lower, and this place is kind of shit for anything like actual farming. They used to outsource most of it, apparently, but wherever they did it is long lost.) She deals with the administrivia, butlers obsessing over cutlery and hats and whatever they're programmed to be obsessed with (every single fucking one of them has an obsession: you feel like a racist for thinking it, but you've met every living Dersite in the universe and it has literally never been not true). 

Some days she watches the skies. Some days she goes out to preside over the populace. Some days she watches the machines in the basement, ever whirring, alchemizing and spinning and searching, for what, even she doesn't know. Some days, she works with every broken bit of computer she can find.

You don't get why. Your shades were voice-activated anyway; you can still type whenever you can find a keyboard; you can still write when it's important. Sure, it never seems important enough to bother anymore, but the more you try to explain that, the harder she works.

"Words are _important_ ," is all she's ever said to explain.

And yeah, you remember thinking they were, once, back when you loved them, lived with them, breathed in their rhythm and their flow; but everything's different now, everything's wrong and broken and abandoned, and you're not the same person you used to be.

You're actually pretty okay with that. You're not sure you're ever going to be able to explain why.

She works long past "dusk", past midnight, occasionally past what dawn there is, but what sun you have is a small and distant thing, so it doesn't make a lot of difference; you trail her through dark and silent corridors regardless, past dark suits of armor and oddly variegated paintings, until you reach her room, and you lock the door behind you.

None of them have ever commented on it. You wonder if it's their sense of propriety, or if they're so hard-wired they literally can't even see it when it's right in front of their eyes. You wonder if they even know what it could be; Rose says they were born in vats, but you've seen a few pairs around the city, arm in arm. Whether or not they have sex, and frankly you would give nearly everything you still have to not know the answer to that question, they've got romance, or something near enough nobody should give a fuck.

Shit, is what you have romance? Some days you're not sure. Some days it seems more like duty or the fact that there's literally no place else in the fucking universe for you to be. 

And yet. As the days wear on, and the stars go out, and everything continues on its leisurely descent toward a cold and barren Hell, you're more and more certain that this is what you would have chosen anyway.

You're not who you used to be, but you're still the most contrary son of a bitch in the universe.

If only because Rose is a woman.

\--

There's a certain stubborn look Rose gets in her eyes when she's about to say something she thinks you'll hate. It's steely and bossy and just a little bit afraid, and you hate seeing it, because she's only getting better at predicting what will and won't still piss you off. Nothing you can do but wait it out, though; and she says, "I must embark on a journey."

And where the fuck is there to journey to? But that can't be it; you know there's more coming.

And she says, "This is a journey I must undertake alone."

Oh, bull _shit_.

"Don't you give me that look. You're not a goddamned puppy nor a child and you are perfectly capable of fending for yourself for a few days."

Like that's the goddamn issue! And she knows it, too, you can see it in her eyes. Taking advantage of your disability, what a dick move.

"Look, you _can't_ come," she says. "It's one of those... idiotic, soul-searching in the Dreamverse sorts of things. You know the cliches. A voyage of self-discovery. There aren't any assassins on voyages of self-discovery."

Oh, like there's any damn place you can expect to escape assassins. You count off imaginary examples on your fingers, glaring at her.

"You do _not_ remember that many examples of assassins attacking on voyages of self-discovery," she says, accurately, though you think you might've bluffed her anyway. "Dave, you have _killed_ all of the assassins. There are none left."

Not in this universe, you're pretty sure, though you have no intention of letting your guard down. Most of the born usurpers hatched their plots within weeks, though Dersites can be much more patient than they seem. They're probably all gone; but you're never, ever going to just trust that.

(There are weeks of your recovery that are just a haze; and then you started to wake up. You looked up, your vision almost clear, and saw pale blonde hair, gone nearly silver, and violet eyes, chilly but engaged, and full lips, quirking into a smile, and the glitter of light off an obsidian sword raising over her head.

She's asked you how the hell you managed to move that fast. You can't answer, because frankly you have no fucking clue; you barely remember what you did, except the crunch that rattled your bones and the way the blood stained the wall, and you were back out for nearly a week after. You're not letting your guard down, not ever. She will not be killed while you're still breathing.)

"There is no choice," she says. "You know as well as I that something is coming. If we are to stand a chance, we need more power than we have. And even that may not avail; but _fucked_ if I am going down without a fight."

You stare at her for a moment, wondering who the fuck says "avail" anyway, admiring the way she swears, biting the words with bitter precision. Rose takes no such words in vain. She means precisely and fully what she says.

"Anyway, you needn't worry," she says, turning. "It won't even be here. I shall be searching in the world of dreams."

One of the very few times you miss words anymore-- your arms are waving violently, and you're trying to yell, _That's WORSE!_

But she fucking knows it, and there's nothing you can do, because she's the queen and your queen and also she happens to be right.

But if she thinks you're sticking around here to stand vigil, she's got another thing coming.

\--

Her plan is to keep it secret-- like any of these busybodies aren't gonna notice when she disappears for a few days, for fuck's sake-- but she has to tell a couple of servants anyway, and it's gratifying that they look as appalled as you were.

You wonder if they dream... or if they dream the same way you do. You're pretty sure they dream something, you think you've heard them talk about it, but you don't think they go where you go, because you've never seen them there. 

Not that you seek people out, in those worlds. You hide, because all of them are strangers, especially the ones who look like people you used to know. 

They don't feel like normal dreams. You don't remember what normal dreams were like. They feel like sleepwalking through twisted landscapes, parallel worlds, strange amalgamations that can shift with any step and are getting weirder every day. Sometimes the sky is red and the sun is blinding. Sometimes the trees are crystalline and blue, with delicate pink petals like if cherry blossoms were razor-sharp. Sometimes there are lizards; sometimes crocodiles; sometimes John and sometimes Jade, and that's when you run away, to your place, where you always wake up, lava and starless sky and the broken towers of three cities all together. There are intrusions, even there. It's not entirely your own. But it's still safer, more yours.

They wander through, sometimes, though-- a grey pixie, a pirate, a little kid in a suit or ridiculous red pajamas-- looking at your landscape, wondering whose it is, and then gone, because it's an enormous multiverse in here, and yours is just a small and broken part of it, backwater, abandoned.

They all seem to know more than you do, have some purpose, some great quest, and sometimes you feel left out; there's a path you're supposed to be on, and you fucked up near the very beginning of it, completely and irrevocably, and you'll never be one of them, whatever happens. Sometimes that feels lonely; but whenever you start thinking that way, there's something else you remember.

You're the oldest Dave you've ever seen, in there, without a contest, and you think that's got to be some sort of victory.

\--

She's the Queen for a reason, of course.

You wake up with a headache and a chambermaid babbling apologies and regrets at you, they didn't even know but what could they do because _orders_. Which you can understand. You weren't bred in a vat to take orders from a Queen (not to your knowledge, anyway, but now that you're thinking of it, it might explain some shit), and even you are seriously wary of pissing her off.

Not that a pissed-off Rose is always a bad thing. Oh, far from it.

You lay your head back down on the pillow as the chambermaid runs off to fetch a pitcher of water (has it been a full decade since you had any apple juice? God damn, but you miss it). Your head is still fuzzy from whatever she slipped you last night; you stare at the ceiling, and think about a night only a few years after you'd been stranded here, as far as you can tell time in this place, anyway.

She was sitting at her dresser, hilariously unsuited to be a lab bench, with miniature screwdrivers and a malfunctioning solder gun you were watching closely just in case it started sparking, or possibly blew up. The chip she was working on kept skittering away, bouncing off the mirror, and she would swear as she scrabbled to retrieve it; and you dug out the notebook from your pocket. You were sparing with it-- didn't want to run out of grist for food just because you couldn't keep your goddamn trap shut, and the year's quota was running low-- but this was getting ridiculous.

You wrote, "for fucks sake lalonde they made those things with fucking lasers", and tossed the notebook on the dresser.

She jumped, and glared at you; it had nearly hit her excuse for a motherboard, but you'd made sure to wait till she put the solder down. She read it, and snapped, "Functional technology was around long before the invention of micrometers and ultraviolet lasers, and there is no reason whatsoever that it cannot be revived."

You took back the notebook; "lady youre working on something they made with lasers with a solder gun, its like trying to fold origami out of plywood".

"I fucking noticed," she snapped, and threw it back, hard.

You caught it; "then why the fuck do you keep doing this", you wrote, and tossed it on the dresser.

She didn't even pick it up, just took a second's glance and whipped around, and she screamed, " _Because I fucking miss you!_ "

You took a step back; she stood, eyes blazing, possibly glowing, though you wouldn't swear to it now. She said, "For years all you were to me was words on a screen, and I don't care if that's regarded as less _real_ , I miss it horribly. You give so little away anymore, I don't know what you're thinking, I could read you so easily-- and you used to sing, drop a metaphor at a moment's notice, you were a goddamned artist and I know you still are in there but you can't _show_ it! And I can't read people like I read words, I never could, write it down and I can tell you anything and everything you want to know, but stand it in front of me? Stand it in front of me and-- I--"

She wobbled; you caught her, an arm around her waist and her hand in yours; and you've asked her how the hell she managed to move that fast, but she's never answered, and you are left with a jump between holding her in your arms and being pressed back against her headboard that no one in the universe can satisfactorily explain.

Not that you were asking for explanations; she was leaning toward you, eyes bright with anger, face darkened by shadows, and all you could think of was her face as she crouched over you, the day she first found you, glowing with magic and panic and--

\--Rage, and she was still just as furious, more at the universe than you, but you were the one she was taking it out on, and if it was making her kiss like that, then frankly you'd be the scapegoat any time.

She leaned back, then, like she was going to think better of it, or stop, and to hell with that; so you pulled out the cockiest shit-eating smirk you could manage, and hell yes, that set her off again, yanking furiously at your worn purple undershirt-- and hey, double bonus, it was so damn old you'd needed to replace it anyway. She ran her hands over you, forcefully, but no, for once, she wasn't fooling you-- her hands lingered at the ends of caresses, skittered delicately over scars. No, for once, you knew exactly what she was doing, and damn, was that a strange feeling.

Which was probably why she so thoroughly distracted you from it, pinning your arms down and riding you hard until you couldn't think, could hardly breathe, weren't sure you were still alive... but that was a stupid idea, you thought, when you finally could again, staring up at the ceiling, your breath just starting to slow.

You _were_ alive. And somehow, something felt-- better. Something felt-- less out of place. Like you _had_ a place. Like you had a goal, even if it was hopeless; a role, even if it was superfluous. A place you belonged, even if that place was a shithole teetering precariously on the edge of annihilation.

You probably couldn't protect her; she probably didn't need protecting; but you could die trying and be content with the bargain. 

She was curled up on her side, away from you; you shifted, leaning over to kiss her cheek. She started to cry, silently, and you held her close.

You woke to find her looking down at you, and as soon as your eyes were open, she said, "I suppose I'll take that as consent."

You scoffed and rolled over; and you've shared her bed every night since.

The chambermaid comes with the water. You gulp half of it down before fumbling for your notepad, writing "WHERE?"

"Down," she says; and that's enough for you to know exactly what she means.

\--

There are beds in the core of the world, and you don't know why the fuck that would even be; what, did the old monarchs have some sort of cave fetish? You aren't gonna be looking at the stalagmites around here in the same way ever again. But there they are, purple, like everything else, and there she is, lying, of course, directly in between them, curled up in blankets on the rocky floor.

Why the _fuck_ would she come all the way down here and not even use the damn beds? You shake your head; you've learned better, by now, what questions aren't even worth bothering to ask. 

Though maybe you can figure it out for yourself. The symbols on the beds are pretty familiar; the ones that were assigned to the two of you, you think, because you've seen young Daves and Roses wearing them often enough. (To be young and unconcerned about how ridiculous the shit you're wearing is.) So it might make sense for her to avoid them; she's hated all the SBurb paraphernalia for quite some time now, and this is a hate-train you are thoroughly on board with. You'd be the conductor if the position weren't taken. What's first mate on a train? Engineer?

Whatever; there aren't any trains, anymore. That explains why she'd avoid the beds, but it doesn't explain why the hell she'd come all the way down here in the first place. It's secure enough, sure, but not really all that more secure than a locked room in the palace, if you were standing outside. 

You sigh; you feel like a jackass, just sitting here. There's a long tradition of ornamental guards but you want no part of it. There's also a long tradition of knights or whatever standing vigil to get moral powers or something but you don't want any part of that shit either. You're not an ornament and you're not a pawn.

_A Knight is just another chess piece, too._

You stare at the ceiling, and wonder, again, what the hell kind of Knight you were even supposed to be. The Silent Knight? Knight of Broken Glass? Knight of the Living Dead?

Okay, that hurt. 

You rub at your eyes, and think, _Fuck it, we aren't dead._ You're probably supposed to be, you're just taking your time about it. You can't tell what's going on in the wider universe, but it's going on without you, and this moon is dying, slowly. This universe is dying slowly, everyone and everything in it, and all you're really doing is putting it off.

But you're not dead yet. And fuck going quietly.

You stand up, and wonder what the fuck you're doing. There may or may not be any assassins left on Derse, but you're absolutely sure there are assassins a-plenty where she is, and she's probably distracted by her Quest to Find Her Whatever, too.

But you can't leave her unguarded here, either.

You stand up, and you head back toward the surface-- you're not exactly sure what you intend to do there, especially since you have no intention of leaving the only entrance to the chamber unblocked; but maybe your ears are sharper than you know, because as you near the exit, you start to realize that's not going to be a problem after all.

Because they're out there, standing and sitting guard at the entrance, the entire staff of the palace, and probably more besides. They are chatting, sure, and playing cards, but there's at least a dozen of them, with dark, wicked blades hanging off their hips. Untrained, sure, but how much is that going to matter when they've got numbers?

The chambermaid sees you first; she says, "We'll stand guard here. We can handle anything that happens here. You have to protect her where we can't go."

So; not the same dream world as you, after all. And they _know_ it. How do they know it?

"It's okay, sir," she says. "Go."

So you do, back down the long and winding path to the heart of the world; and you steal the Queen's blankets as you settle in behind her.

Falling asleep will be the easy part.

\--

The hard part is going to be finding her.

You wake where you always do, a metal gear in a sea of lava; you don't have the time to walk, so you fly. You pass Terran apartment buildings and Derse's spindly towers; there's a body somewhere in that mess of your memories, if not far more than one, but that can rest in peace for now.

How to find her? There's high ground in this place, but never for long. Still: you fly up, out into the patchwork sky, ignoring the gray pixie people who are chasing each other around just as effectively as they are ignoring you. _Now, if I were a lunatic lady out on a Mystic Quest, where the fuck would I be?_

The question doesn't help. You don't even know what the fuck she's looking for, really. One thing, though; there's a huge group gathering to the-- you'll call it south. You don't think her Mystic Quest involves much socializing (though maybe it should), you don't think she'd seek out that kind of attention willingly, and you're pretty sure that even Rose couldn't piss off that many people at once-- or if she had, there would be lightning by now. 

North it is.

Where would she be, you wonder? Somewhere of her own? Somewhere you'd recognize? She could've left some fucking breadcrumbs-- though that didn't really work for Hansel and Gretel, did it? 

You try veering left; a few dreams later, you veer back right; you've got this feeling that you'll know where you're going, somehow, that you'll be drawn to her side like steel to a magnet, back where you belong, but as you actually start to think about it in the harsh light of whatever the fuck that is in the sky at the moment, it's starting to seem like five or six different kinds of bullshit. Just 'cause you've survived doesn't mean you're magic. Just 'cause magic's real doesn't mean it works that way.

There's a flash of light somewhere to the south, bright like lightning and thunder chasing it, but lasting seconds too long; you turn, and it's silhouetting the oldest Dave you've ever seen here.

"Holy fuck, we've got ourselves a relic," he says, arms folded. You look him over; green-rimmed shades, green-tinted plate-armor, emerald cloak, black sword at his side. He's got a color theme going, at least, and lithe muscles that make you think of your brother, though you know yours probably equal them by now. "What's next, Jade with a dog head, Rose the Whore of Babylon?"

You narrow your eyes, and say nothing. If the bitch wants a fight, he can figure out the hard way that you've always been your own worst enemy. 

"Oldest fuckin' Dave I've ever seen in the deadverse, I'm impressed," he says. "And only _mostly_ dead, too. Can't fault the fashion sense, either. Guess great Daves and shit ones still dress alike."

You wonder what he's talking about, and notice for the first time the weight of the cloak at your back. God damn, you bet you're practically a fucking palette swap of this douchebag-- not completely, but it's too damn close. You're gonna kick your subconscious in the nuts if you ever see the little fucker. Not exactly out of the question, given where you are.

"Y'know, work's over for today," he says, drawing his sword. "I think it's playtime."

You just stare at him, unimpressed. That's gonna piss the fucker off.

"...Aren't gonna put up a fight?" He lowers it a little, glaring suspiciously at you.

You mime looking at your watch. You _can_ talk, in dreams-- but only if you choose to.

"What? Are you _busy_? Orders to follow? Jack to shit?" He laughs. "Bull shit, little man, you've got nothing. When the hell did you even get yourself fucked, anyway? Must've been early if you're this out of sync. Nowhere even fucking close to God Tier, did you even get in the game? Did you get your ass handed to you by a meteor? Seriously trip down the fuckin' stairs? 'Cause shit, bro, how many times you gotta be warned about the stairs? How often you gotta be told?"

_Was I really that neck-deep in forbidden animalistic lust for the sound of my own voice?_ you wonder, but don't say it. He knows how to deal with words. He doesn't know how to deal with silence. It took you long and fucking grueling years to learn. Might as well pay off somehow.

"The fuck are you even still standing here for? You're so busy picking flowers or talking with dead people or whatever, aren't you gonna try to run?"

You're not running. You're too certain he wants you to. _Seriously, you insufferable prick, where'd you go for the honeymoon? Not Niagara Falls. Grand Canyon? Hoping you and your voice could fuck so loud the whole state could hear the echoes? Jesus, I'm out of practice._

"You'd better," he says, "'cause you might already be too late."

He doesn't have any idea what the fuck you're doing and you're sure of that, but your muscles stiffen anyway. If he threatens Rose-- but he isn't, doesn't know she exists. _Do you have a safeword? No, duh, obviously not. Safe paragraph? Safe novel?_

"Anything you're looking for here? Anyone you're looking for? They might be gone already." And he grins; "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, motherfucker."

And you begin to be afraid; not of him, but of whatever the fuck has happened to him. That green isn't yours, that green wasn't Jade's. What has he sold himself to? Or what took him as its slave?

Thirty seconds ago you'd have called yourself broken, but it's nothing compared to what you see in his eyes.

"He's coming for you," he says. "He's coming for everyone. He's already here, and nothing's gonna be left."

He raises his sword, and your hand grips the hilt of your own, finally, because you've got five beats, exactly one line; you know his rhythms by heart. 

"I am a Servant of the Lord! Fell Knight of the Felt! This is your last fucking warning: _Draw your sword!_ "

And you do, because any Dave Strider who could say that shit with a straight face is so far down some unimaginable rabbithole it makes teatime with the Horrorterrors look like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. 

He flies at you the second you do, a crazed grin on his face, but you dodge without effort; he tries again, and you swoop down. You'd crib a line from Star Trek about thinking two-dimensionally, but it's geeky as shit, you haven't seen the movie in like a decade, and your strategy is silence, and instinct tells you not to break it.

"Oh, this'll be fun," he says, and lunges again. You dive backward-- and the chase begins.

Why not stand your ground? You're not sure, you don't have time to think, but you're pretty sure you're safe, 'cause as far as People Who Can Fuck With Dave Strider go, you've got to be at least second on the list. 

"You can't run forever!" he yells, and you just roll your eyes, feinting right; like that's even your plan. Weak. He scores a hit on your armor; he might be fooled into thinking that means you're getting tired. You know dream-logic better than that. Does he?

"You're from a doomed timeline, you've failed already. You don't have a chance against the real Dave."

Pfft; like you'll believe him so easily. Everyone thinks they're in the Real timeline, till the very second before it goes to hell. Everyone _is_ in the Real timeline, to them. Exactly one Dave actually is in the "real" timeline, whoever the fuck arbitrates such things, and you'd bet solid boonbucks that this chucklefuck ain't him. 

Your swords meet, and you whirl behind him, and he has to twist quickly to get away; "Who the fuck are you, anyway?" he says, regrouping for only a second before charging again.

You duck, and score a hit on his unshielded leg. "Seriously," he says, "the fuck is up with you, anyway? Don't give me this Penn and Teller bullshit."

You barely remember who Penn and Teller are. That's the real reason you don't drop rhymes the way you used to. All your references are dead, dumb, irrelevant.

You press your advantage, a block, two blocks, he stumbles as you press him backwards and regroups in a heartbeat; "Why the fuck won't you say anything? The hell is wrong with you, anyway?"

Another clash of swords, and he rushes you, screaming, "ANSWER ME!" 

The wind picks up, and he starts to glow a sickly green; you duck and roll, and meet him at full strength. No more fucking around. Your swords clash, and the impact rattles your bones, but you press on; the light turns so bright it's hot against your skin, and you press on; he screams like some douchebag from Dragonball Z and you press on; and he comes at you and comes at you and you meet him, blocking, every time.

It doesn't matter. You know, somehow, he'll be the first to falter. And he does, a second's misstep, just long enough for you to knock his blade away, and shove your own through his gut-- the fate of dead Daves everywhere, really; sometimes you can't fight against tradition. 

He staggers back, and drops; you wonder if he even wanted to win. Christ, you'd be looking for death if someone had turned you into that kind of asshole. You don't know what's been stopping him from committing seppuku ages ago.

You draw near to look down at him; he's gasping, and he says, "How the fuck did you...? You're nobody. How did you.... the Knight of Lord...?"

He vanishes from the dream world without a trace; and you say, "Turns out it's pretty amazing what you learn if you just shut the fuck up for five minutes. Jesus Christ."

You turn, and you take back to the air, returning to shit that actually matters.

\--

It's not much longer after that when you finally spot her. 

It isn't hard to realize which land was hers once you see it; plenty of Roses have towers of Derse around, nearly all of them that crazy old house she used to live in, but you bet there's only one who's got the Queen's Palace in her head, especially one that specific kind of broken down. It's odd; all the other Dersite towers in her head are restored, the way you can barely even remember that they were, but the palace is untouched. There's probably some deep philosophical psychological bullshit to be gleaned there but you've got other concerns right now.

She has updated the landscaping, though, and that's where you find her-- lying on her back in the middle of a rose garden, in full Queenly regalia, looking utterly exhausted. 

You land silently beside her, the red and violet and white and black blossoms wavering in the breeze; you intend to look her over for wounds, but her eyes open as soon as your feet touch the ground, dark and lazy and arresting. 

There's something absolutely unfair, completely addictive, you think, about the way her lips quirk into a smile every time she sees your face.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," she says.

"Well, if you were in a fuckin' hurry, you could've left me a map," you say. "Or a note. Or _drugged_ me a little less, god damn, you know what kind of headache Derse's Oblivion gives me."

"I do, it's a mild one that hardly lasts an hour," she retorts, and her eyes close again. " _I'm_ the one it debilitates for half a day."

"That's 'cause you always mix it with your mother's old hooch, shit probably could've killed a pony _before_ it was exposed to all the cosmic rays."

You sit down beside her, and she says, remotely, "I wonder what did happen to Maplehoof."

You don't have the faintest damn idea; you've chalked it up as another casualty, another line-item in your list of mysteries that will never be solved. You should try to number that list sometime; you're pretty sure it's got to be up in the thousands, at least, and that's half of what if would be if you even knew all the shit you'll never know.

She says, "Oh, I got you something," and she fumbles at her side, coming up with two rather large swords you're pretty sure weren't there a second ago. 

"Am I supposed to dual-wield now?" you ask, hand hesitating to stretch out. These are choices, sometimes, and important ones, not to be made lightly.

She shrugs; "Take neither, or either, or both. They both have uses. It's your decision."

You look more closely at them. One has a red hilt, a jagged black grooved blade curved in a circle, with an inner curve of red-- a broken record, you realize, with a slightly uncomfortable jolt, crafted somehow into a short sword. The other has a simple hilt of black, studded sparsely with amethyst and ruby, guarding a longsword of crystal, not quite clear, but you're not sure if it's veined with white or faintly glowing.

Maybe the symbology is just obvious, or maybe it's being where you are, but you think, _The past, and the present._ That might be the choice you're being presented-- maybe it's something different. Maybe it's not a choice at all.

But you think about it, back to those brief days when you were about to take a world of fire by storm, back to the emerald Dave with nothing left of his own; and you knew you had to embrace the present, but you haven't thought about the past in forever. It's hurt too badly.

You take them both, raising the curved one to the light, and Rose says, "Though much is taken, much abides..."

You mean to think it, to save ruining your facade of illiteracy, but the lines are blurred here; "But something ere the end may yet be done, not unbecoming those born to be gods."

She laughs a little; "That was the real challenge of it, you know. Even now we're not entirely abandoned. SBurb wants me to be a Seer of Light, the Horrors a Sibyl of Darkness; and I want them both to go and fuck themselves, since metaphysical concepts or not they're clearly well-equipped. I shall use my own power. Inasmuch as that's even possible, entangled as we are..."

She sighs, lying back; and you say, "I wonder what I was supposed to be a Knight of, anyway."

There's a silence, which doesn't faze you; but it stretches a little long, and you turn her head back toward her, wondering what it is that's burning fiercely in her eyes.

"Lalonde, of course," she says, in a tone that brooks no argument. "Rose Lalonde. Mine, and intended to be, all along."

She's lying to you, of course. You don't know what the fuck you were ever supposed to be, but you know for certain that no one and nothing in the universe ever intended for you to be her Knight-- hell, not even her.

Maybe that makes you the Knight of Irony: she's lying, but it's true.

"Yes, ma'am," you say, and confusion flickers briefly across her face, maybe even hurt.

"...Then you'll do as I say?" she says, suspiciously.

"Yes, ma'am," you reply.

"...Without bitching?"

You just laugh, because even if you could just be submissive, properly subordinate, you're starting to understand that it would drive her around the fucking bend. You're not entirely sure why. You don't need to be. The look of relief on her face is proof enough. 

"I didn't think so," she says, the veneer of disapproval in her voice obviously belied by the way she relaxes back into the grass.

_Knight of Lalonde_ , you think. It's pretty much true. You'll bitch and you'll complain and at the end of the day, at the beginning of the day, every second of the day you'll be hers; and you're okay with that. Maybe the "real" Dave would be fucking scandalized. Maybe he'd understand; it was in you all along.

But you're okay with this.

"Some douchebag on the way called me 'mostly dead'," you say.

"How dare we equate breathing with life." She looks up at you.

"Nah-- we're more than just breathing," you say. "We're just as alive as any of those other fuckers. Been at it longer, too."

"Indeed." She looks up at the sky. "I might even like to live forever."

You lie beside her, staring up at the clouds drifting against the fuzzy dividing lines of the patchwork sky. She says, "D'you think there's any chance of it?"

You keep staring at the sky, the patch of red on the horizon, this land of life after death, and you say, "I have no fucking clue."

She says, "Neither do I," and stares up at the sky. 

You look at her, the line of worry and guilt creasing her forehead, the sorrow in her eyes, and the faint, real smile of her lips, and you say, "Let's find out."

She looks at you, and grins wide and true; and as you lean down to kiss her, you silently swear yourself into her service once more, because your heart is as lost as the rest of you, and you're as grateful as you've ever been in your life.

\--

She walks like there's a weight balanced against her shoulders, one she's learned to carry through long practice: one that's made her stronger. You follow behind her, always a step behind, two swords hanging from your belt, armor polished as bright as it will get.

The stars are gone, and the sky is flickering red and green, lit by something like demented Christmas tentacles, and there's got to be porn about that somewhere. Rose steps onto the balcony, and the Dersites are huddled below, looking scared, looking like they believe in her, and you think you're starting to understand why that's a hard thing to bear. 

You trust her anyway. You can't help it. You'll lighten the load of it on her, if you can.

Her robes are the same worn velvet, but her diadem is new-- a band of black ribbon, embossed with amethyst and silver filigree, with a perfect circle of mirror sitting in the middle of her forehead. Her gloved hand settles on the railing, and she looks down, at the large but too-small crowd of Dersites and consorts. Even a couple of years ago, it was larger than this. One way or another, this is probably the end of all of you.

She says, "It may be for the best; may be that we were meant for nobler things than scraping by. More than mere survival: though a noble kingdom, this, and closely knit, a greater mission calls."

You look at her, keeping your expression guarded, as you try to figure out if she's speaking in verse, or if you've just finally lost your mind. The second one really seems more likely, but this is Rose, still, after all.

"We cannot merely rest: through toils together we have worked day to day, but coming night calls us to direr tasks. As we have lived through calmer days, so we shall face the storm: joys the same as peril, better shared, and your company so very dear. We've been on epic journeys, through strange lands and wastes of space none else have ever seen; and more awaits, more battles to survive, more wars to win, more ways to beat our fate. We cannot merely pause, come to an end, or rust unburnished, not to shine in use--"

Now you _know_ she's coming close to verse, and plagiarizing lightly to boot; but they're gazing up in wonder, and you can't say you wouldn't do the same, under that sort of stress. 

Okay, you probably _wouldn't_ do the same, but it'd be some sort of equivalent that'd involve more Snoop and less Tennyson. It would probably be a nuclear trainwreck of irony.

Her hand is trembling faintly; but none of them can see it. "As though to breathe were life! Life is much more, and nowhere near so simple to dissolve. We may not win, but something ere the end, some work of noble note may yet be done; some strike for justice, or against the Gods. The twilight wanes, the stars go out, the sky seethes and flickers dimly. Come, my friends: it's not too late to seek a newer world."

She leans forward, and says, "Though much is taken, much abides, and though we may not have that strength to move the heavens, that which we are, we are: one equal temper of heroic hearts, besieged by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find-- and not to yield."

She looks down, and over the sea, perhaps the lake, of faces; and she says, so low you're not sure if they can hear, "I shall be worthy of your trust. The world may end, we all may die, my words may all be lies, my secrets black; but I shall be worthy of the trust you've placed in me."

She's not talking to them.

You can't pass her a note, not here, and by the time you're free it will be too late; but you want to tell her, _I know that you are._

She straightens, and extends her hands, and twin crystalline needles appear in them, nearly as long as shortswords, glittering with thorns. She looks up at the sky, and at the horizon, where the thicker clouds are gathering. She does not look back.

"Let's go," she says, and jumps down, to land in the midst of the army she will lead to war.

As you will for the rest of your life, no matter how long that happens to last, you follow, ever vigilant, her silent Knight.

\--


End file.
